SCYR Committee Meeting

SUB-COMMITTEE ON CHILDREN AND YOUTH AT RISK OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT AND THE STATUS OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

SOUS-COMITÉ SUR LES ENFANTS ET JEUNES À RISQUE DU COMITÉ PERMANENT DES RESOURCES HUMAINES ET DE LA CONDITION DES PERSONNES HANDICAPÉES

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, March 16, 1999

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[English]

The Chairman (Mr. John Godfrey (Don Valley West, Lib.)): Ladies and gentlemen, I think we'll declare the session open, on the understanding—and in the hope and expectation—that we'll be joined by more of our colleagues from their other duties.

I hope you'll forgive them in advance if they drift in. I didn't want to waste time, because our time is precious and so is yours.

To committee members, I hope some of you will be able to stay at the end of hearing the witnesses in order to discuss briefly a budget matter in terms of our being able to bring in witnesses from places other than Ottawa.

[Translation]

I hope that at the conclusion of the meeting, we can discuss the budget to cover the expenses of witnesses from Quebec and elsewhere.

[English]

I welcome you as the first witnesses, really, to appear on our study here. I think you will know what we're on about. We're attempting to get you to locate—I guess that would be the best way of putting it—the situation of children today in Canada. This will allow us in turn to focus our own work as we move into a study that will particularly look at, I think, young children and the issues of outcomes, the issues of different levels of competence, provincial versus federal, and what we can do collectively in a fairly short time to make some policy suggestions.

I think it would be appropriate to begin with Wayne Smith, director of the special surveys division.

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I welcome both you and your colleague, Madam Michaud. Why don't you introduce yourselves and begin. Then we'll move along to the others.

Mr. Wayne Smith (Director, Special Surveys Division, Statistics Canada): We've been asked this afternoon to speak to you about the national longitudinal survey of children and youth. This is the survey Statistics Canada conducts on behalf of Human Resources Development Canada.

I've asked Sylvie Michaud, an assistant director in the special surveys division and project manager for the survey, to give you a brief presentation. I'll turn it over to Sylvie.

[Translation]

Ms. Sylvie Michaud (Assistant Director/Manager, Special Surveys Division, National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, Statistics Canada): Mr. Chairman, committee members should have received a copy of the transparencies. Would you like me to explain them to you or are the copies sufficient?

The Chairman: We will circulate the documents. Does everyone have copies?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Under the federal Brighter Futures initiative, the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth or NLSCY is the result of a joint partnership between Statistics Canada and Human Resources Development Canada.

As its name indicates, the NLSCY is a long-term study designed to measure child and youth development. The first cycle of the study began in November 1994 and ran until March 1995.

A sample of children between the ages of 0 and 11 was selected in 1994-1995 and since then, information has been collected every two years. We are now into the third cycle of the study.

The objectives of the NLSCY are as follows: to determine the prevalence of various biological, social and economic characteristics and risk factors of children and youth; to monitor the impact of such risk factors on the development of these children and; to provide this information to various policy committees, program officials, researchers and the Canadian public in general.

A conceptual framework was devised to study child development. This is a complex process. Working within this framework, we attempted to identify various areas of interest. The objective was to measure of the context in which child development occurs. A such, we gather information from the children themselves as well as information about potential opportunity structures, resources and expected and unexpected transitions in a child's life. We then endeavour to measure the incidence of these various factors and their outcomes on children.

The NLSCY also collects information from parents about their children. Information is also collected on the work situation, income, demographics, health and the family and neighbourhood environment. We also interview parents who shared information with us about their children's personalities, behaviour, child care requirements and relationships with friends and family.

Schools also provided us with information. We contacted school teachers and principals to obtain information about children's academic performances, their behaviour in the classroom and their learning habits. We also interview principals about the types of resources, potential discipline problems and the environment in that particular school.

Lastly, we obtain a variety of information from test results and performance measurements, for example, from the PPVT, a vocabulary test. Children also undergo tests designed to measure their mathematical skills and their reading level.

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From the age of 10 upward, we collect information about adolescents, about their health and habits. For example, we interview them to find out whether they have started to smoke or drink. We also collect information from them about school, their level of self-esteem and other facets of their life.

[English]

So far we've released the first full year of completed information. We released part of the second part of collected information in October 1998, at “Investing in Children”, a conference organized by HRDC.

I'm going to give just a very brief overview. Research is just starting. We still have lots of information to cover.

Overall, Canadian children seem to be doing well, at least in terms of health. As in 1994, we confirmed that most parents report that their children are in excellent and very good health in 87% of the cases. The number of children who repeated a grade was only 3%.

So a number of results that have been reported in 1994 seem to hold true in 1996.

Children in both low-income or single-parent families are also more likely to have either relationship problems—with parents, friends, or teachers—or behavioural problems. For example, in 1994 children from low-income families were more than twice as likely than other children to have relationship problems. The data also indicated that children from single-parent families were almost twice as likely to have a behavioural problem than were other children.

In 1994 parenting practices were found to help explain the child's overall social relationship and explain some at-risk factors. The longitudinal analysis suggests that a similar pattern exists. Parenting practices seems to be related to behavioural problems, or seems to be somewhat important related to behavioural problems.

Those are just trends in 1996. The longitudinal survey is trying to measure its transition, its change, its movement, and what explains for these changes.

If you look at the first graph, in 1994 we had found that children living in single-parent families were almost four times as likely to be in the lowest income family quartile as opposed to children from families with two parents.

From these children in the lowest income quartile in 1994, who comes out of there in 1996? Who seems to be able to get out of that low income?

If you look at the second graph, basically children in single-parent families were the least likely to move out of the lowest income quartile. Only 15% of the children living in single-parent families, in 1994 and 1996, actually moved out of that family-adjusted lowest income quartile.

In 1996, two groups appeared to have similar success. The first was two-parent families—and other studies from Statistics Canada have suggested that this was related to change in labour market conditions for some of them—and the second was families where one parent got married or had a spouse. Both factors seem to have had the same effect. However, while getting married may help some families move out of the low income quartile, it still does not solve all family problems.

We also tried to look at health. As I said earlier, 87% of parents in 1994 said their children were in good health. Children not in very good or excellent health, both in 1994 and 1996, represented less than 5% of children, but again, children in the lowest income quartile in both 1994 and 1996 were two times more likely to not be in excellent or very good health.

That's something the parents are reporting. It's not a physical measure.

Let's look at behavioural problems and repeating a grade. Between 1994 and 1996, only 3% of children in the sample repeated a grade. However, the rate of repeating a grade in school was three times higher for children who were persistently in the lowest income quartile in both 1994 and 1996 versus not in the lowest income quartile in either 1994 or 1996.

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That being said, it's important to know that even among those children in the lowest income quartile, both years, only 6% of children repeated a grade. That's why initially the statement was saying, well, overall, children, for some of these factors, seem to be doing well.

We looked at children's behaviour problems, which we defined as those who score high on a series of indexes—hyperactivity, emotional disorders, conduct disorders, physical aggression, indirect aggression, and property offences.

In 1996 we had estimated that 20% of children had a behavioural problem regardless of the income situation. Half of these children also had a behavioural problem in 1994, so it's a problem in one of those six categories.

The proportion of children with persistent behaviour problems was almost two times higher for children living in a low-income family.

Findings previously reported in other studies suggest that children with behavioural problems are more likely to have more than one problem. So even though the numbers are small overall, and the majority of children seem to be doing well, we looked at the proportion of children where there seem to be a few more issues.

In terms of behavioural problems, in both 1994 and 1996 we strived to look at the impact of different factors—family composition, income, and parenting style.

Now, parenting style is not a judgment of how parents are doing parenting practices. Parenting style is a series of questions asked of parents. It's a kind of reporting of a difficult relation between the parent and the child.

We've looked at the people who were most extreme on the scale. Again, it's not a judgment call; it's more the relation being hard. What we seem to be finding is that where the relationship between parent and child was the most extreme, both in 1994 and 1996 they were five times more likely to have persistent behaviour problems—again, behaviour problems in 1994 and 1996—compared with the ones that were not on that extreme scale, where relationships between parents and kids were maybe not as tense.

That being said, in the families where they did not have ineffective parenting practices—and that's a label; I want to emphasize this—children in single-parent families were still twice as likely to have persistent behaviour problems than those living with two parents.

This seems to be suggesting that this interaction in important. It doesn't mean that income isn't important, and doesn't mean that the type of family is not important.

This is just a brief overview. Research is continuing. We haven't released all the data yet. Towards the end of April we're hoping to release information on adolescence, what children between 10 and 13 have reported to us, along with more results about what's been happening in school—results of the tests plus results from the teachers and principals.

Merci.

The Chairman: Merci.

With the indulgence of the committee, it would seem to me perhaps useful to hear the full story before we move to questions so that we can see how the stories interrelate. Would that be all right?

Then why don't we move to Katherine Scott, from the Canadian Council on Social Development.

I suspect you're going to tell us about The Progress of Canada's Children, but I'd particularly like it if in your presentation you could show the similarities and differences and nuances between what you're looking at and what we've just heard as you move through your paces.

Ms. Katherine Scott (Senior Research and Policy Associate, Canadian Council on Social Development): Sure.

Thank you very much for having us here.

The Canadian Council on Social Development has been conducting a major research project for a number of years now, called, The Progress of Canada's Children. I've provided copies to the committee. It is modelled on the UN initiative, The Progress of Nations.

It was undertaken a number of years ago because it was determined that while we were very good in Canada about saying good things about our kids, we actually really didn't have a great deal of information, certainly public information, about them, and why it was important for an organization like ours to put forward credible research on kids, to actually track how they're doing so that we'd be able to have a better idea of how we can do better by kids.

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That being said, The Progress of Canada's Children is a report we do every year on the well-being of children, youth and families. It attempts to provide accessible and credible information in a popular magazine format, which is available to families, communities, service organizations and governments. Our goal is certainly to distribute it as broadly as possible.

It discusses, and its central theme is, the influences that shape the lives of children and youth, and it tracks a series of outcome measures for children and youth every year.

As I said, our overall goal is actually to educate the public about the well-being of kids in Canada. We also see the need, and fill the niche, to provide information, such as is developed at Statistics Canada on the national longitudinal survey, and to provide ready access to these types of data that so often don't actually find the light of day. It doesn't filter down to people in communities, or to parents, to people who might benefit tremendously from using these data or knowing about them. So we certainly see ourselves as an important vehicle for that.

Globally, of course, our goal is to inspire action at the national, provincial, and local levels to do better things for our kids, because we clearly see, based on, certainly, our three or four years of research, that there's much to be done to improve the life chances of kids in Canada.

Sylvie has touched on a number of the things that have been raised in the national longitudinal survey.

Our research project, our magazine, is based on quite an extensive research project that looks at a myriad of indicators on children, youth and families. In fact, it's a three-tiered model. The indicators have been selected, with the advice of expert committees—most latterly, our youth advisory committee—and they are measured over time against the base year of 1994.

It's important to note that, as a model, we draw on a variety of sources. The NLSCY has been a critically important source for us, but we also draw on other Statistics Canada surveys—the national population health survey, the work on youth, individual surveys on smoking, and so on—that we feel are interesting research to bring to the Canadian public.

We look at five global areas. In many ways, our report models in some ways the NLSCY that Sylvie was talking about. On the environmental side, the developmental influences on children, we look at five specific areas. We look at economic security of families. We look at family care, or the structure of the family, what's going on inside families. We look at physical safety, which includes everything from injury and accidents to the safety of our natural environment for children, playground safety and the like.

We also look at community resources. I think this is quite an important one, because I think an important developmental influence on children is the access to community resources. Education, health services, housing, which is something we're not hearing enough about these days, leisure and culture—all of these things are necessary. Kids need access to them to develop fully.

Lastly, we look at something called “civic vitality”. That is really how well communities work. This is an area we don't know a lot about—and I'll speak to that later—but the research really points out that healthy kids grow up in healthy families who grow up in healthy communities. What do we know about that, and how well is Canada doing? How civic are Canadian communities? So we've tried to look at that area.

On the outcome side, we look at some of the standard ones. There's health status, clearly, and something we call “social engagement”. That's basically relationships, how well kids are doing in the relationships in their families, with their peers, in the community at large. For instance, we track crime statistics for young offenders, because children who are offending clearly aren't in a very positive relationship with their community.

We also look at learning. That includes academic and non-academic learning—music and those types of things.

For our last group, we look at labour force participation, because clearly the transition to the work world is something that Canadians are interested in. It's an important outcome measure for youth. That's particularly critical right now, given our recent research.

We look at five groups: the early years, birth to 3; schools years, 4 to 9; adolescence, 10 to 14; teens, 15 to 19; and young adult, 20 to 25. We very determinedly decided to include young adults up to age 25, because we strongly believe the transition to adulthood, in many respects, is being lengthened, certainly in this past number of decades. The transition fully to independence and so forth is taking place later on.

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In fact, there are some interesting theories and work going on around that, but I suspect it's a bit beyond the purview of your committee. I won't address that.

I understand you've received a copy of the highlights of the last report we put out. I would refer you to those, certainly about the number of trends we've been measuring from 1994, key trends that I think your committee has been provided with.

From the perspective of our organization, we continue to be very concerned about the developmental outcomes and opportunities for children in low-income families. That remains a persistent and consistent finding in all of the research.

We also would like to present some of the other—

The Chairman: Excuse me, but I would just inform the committee that at the back of their briefing notes, there is an appendix of the highlights.

I think it's probably taken from your web site.

Ms. Katherine Scott: Yes.

The Chairman: So that might assist members.

Sorry to interrupt.

Ms. Katherine Scott: The highlights are actually useful, identifying, as I said, some of the trends we've noted from 1994 through 1995-96.

Economic security remains a particular concern. Despite the fact that the economy has picked up through this period, children in particularly young families continue to struggle. I think there's a very seriously significant group of children being left behind in this economic recovery, and one that we can't lose sight of.

One of the other persistent research themes that has emerged is that the... well, “plight” is too strong a word; the “situation” of children in sole-support or lone-mother families is that they don't face the same developmental opportunities as do children who grow up in two-parent families. The research is clear on this point.

That's for a host of reasons, I think. Many of them are related to income, but when a family is isolated and doesn't have the same networks and social support, it doesn't have what children need to draw upon to be raised healthy. It's something I think we need to be aware of.

Without becoming pejorative and negative, for the most part it's important to remember that single moms do an absolutely tremendous job, a large majority under very stressful circumstances. I think it advances no one's agenda to polarize or play off lone-parent versus two-parent families.

One of the other themes under physical safety, and of rising concern, is environmental, the impact of the environment and pollution on children. That's a new wave of research that the Institute of Child Health has taken a major and leading role in.

I think that might be of interest to the committee, certainly around children being raised in unsafe neighbourhoods; not just violence, but things you don't typically think about, whether it be the type of foods they have access to or the state of the playgrounds.

This links into a global concern with the depleting stock of community resources, which has been the result of the years of cutbacks, primarily at the government level, at all levels of government; I don't think anyone escapes unscathed.

The stock of resources in our communities has been depleted to the extent that the voluntary sector has moved in to try to bolster those efforts, but they are not in a position to do what governments do by way of libraries, sports programs, and the like. I think that's an important concern.

So those are some of the trends we've noted over the years.

I'd like to finish with a question that was asked us: Having done all of this research over this period of time, what are the gaps?

I understand that is your particular concern today.

Drawing on a number of things—and certainly Karen will pick this up—they fall into three groups, for us. In the first group, I'm going to look at groups of children and youth at risk that we know very little about. These would include children and youth in care. This is a tremendously underprivileged group, and we really know very little about it.

The Chairman: Do you mean in foster care?

Ms. Katherine Scott: In care of the state. It could be foster care, it could be in group homes, or in any variety where the state acts as parent. It's typically children who come to attention of the CAS. Children may in fact be in care of their parents, but they're monitored on a family outgoing basis.

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Hopefully you'll hear from the National Youth in Care Network. I would really highly recommend that somebody from that group come to speak to you, because they're a very articulate group of young people.

So this particular group is one we know very little about, and yet this is the group that has had the most difficult start to life—abuse, you name it. If you're looking for a particular focus, we know little about that.

I'll just go through the rest of the list: aboriginal children; children and youth with disabilities; immigrant kids, which is something that's recently come out of the NLSCY; and street kids.

I think these five particular groups are very much at risk. In part, it's the nature of the beast. They're significantly small groups, and it's very difficult to do research.

While Sylvie will tell you that there are aboriginal kids in the NLSCY, they're not kids on reserves. They're kids that are picked up, happenstance, in the urban centres. It isn't necessarily representative. They're such a small group you can't say anything really definitive about them, even though this is a survey of 23,000 kids. That's tremendous, but we still don't know enough about these very particularly high-risk groups of kids. We need to know more about their experiences, their outcomes, and what best practices, best public policy, we should be looking at.

A second theme, I would say, is that we know a lot about the developmental influences. For instance, we know that low income persistently turns up in studies about what sets kids on a good developmental course. We know some of the factors—“protective” factors is the lingo—that help kids out. Healthy relationships with significant adults in their lives are tremendously important to raising kids, even in the worst circumstances.

We don't, however, know a lot about how it works together, about why low income persistently is associated with negative outcomes, and how that works with parenting. We can hypothesize that parents in low-income families have less resources, and they might be more stressed, and they might be acting out in a negative way, but we're not really at the point where we can say definitively that we know a lot about those relationships that put kids at risk.

Finally, over the last two months the council did a survey for Health Canada, asking what were the research gaps. It surveyed 25 of the top child development folks in Canada.

What came out of it was that we don't know a hell of a lot, really, about what works for kids. We need to move—and this is the clinician speaking—from an understanding of risk factors and protective factors to an understanding of what governments, what community groups, and what we as parents can do for our kids.

At this level, we don't have a lot of good evaluation studies. It gets very technical in terms of controlled studies that illustrate that this particular program, the CAPC program, which is tremendous... But it's a mixed bag. Some do really good things and others aren't so great.

We don't have really good evaluative data on those programs. That's true across the country with a variety of different initiatives; often it's with a will and the seat of your pants.

So it's something that really would bear further research and study so that we can have a better idea of what we can do about this. I think it's something of an embarrassment to admit it, but that's the sum of it.

I'll end there.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Before we begin,

[Translation]

if possible, I'd like us to finish up with these health issues.

[English]

I think this has been very interestingly structured, and I think we can see some commonalties.

I would now ask both Sandra Schwartz and Karen Kidder from the Canadian Institute of Child Health to tell us how they come at the question of how Canada's children are doing—similarities and differences.

Ms. Karen Kidder (Project and Research Coordinator, Canadian Institute of Child Health): Okay.

Thank you for inviting me to speak today. My colleague, Sandra Schwartz, will speak next.

The book I'm working on is called, The Health of Canada's Children: A CICH Profile. We're moving into our third edition of this book. It looks at a wide range of health indicators. Its focus really is on the health status of children rather than many of the other kinds of developmental indicators we've been talking about so far today.

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It looks at mortality, it looks at morbidity, it looks at hospitalization, it looks at the leading causes of illness, and it also looks at mental illness and emotional and psychological concerns. Another area we're moving into, and I'd like to come back to at the end of my discussion, is the idea of wellness indicators, which is an area that we don't have very much research on.

During 1993 and 1994, virtually all of the data on the health of Canada's children were evaluated by experts at the Canadian Institute of Child Health. Those that were deemed reliable were then published in the second edition. During 1998 and 1999, we are again reviewing the available data as we move towards the third edition.

We're here before you today to report on the limitations we have recognized and the new directions we are pursuing in response to these consultations. We will focus on issues for which few population-based statistics have been collected, and in so doing affirm our commitment, and we hope yours as well, to voicing concerns that are not well articulated elsewhere. I will be reporting on the health and well-being of children and youth with disabilities, and Sandra will speak about environmental contaminants and child health.

Disability is not a straightforward physical reality. Rather, it is a socially constructed phenomenon that emerges from the complex interplay between physical conditions and impairments, social, cultural and economic factors, and the built environment. To provide appropriate supports to children and youth with disabilities and their families, we need population-based data that will allow us to understand their experiences in a holistic context. So we need more than simply numbers and rates.

There are very few sources of statistics on the health and well-being of these children. The 1991 health and activity limitations survey provides some data. The summary of this material, presented in the second edition of The Health of Canada's Children, is still one of the very few resources available on this subject.

It highlighted such issues as the small but increasing number of children living at home in 1991 who were profoundly challenged—the barriers to participation in leisure activities, the lack of available specialized transportation, the lack of respite opportunities for parents caring for children and youth with disabilities, and disruptions in work patterns experienced by parents.

As valuable as the health and activity limitations survey information was, there were many questions left unanswered. These gaps in the data translate into very real challenges for researchers, program developers, and policy-makers struggling to understand the needs of this population.

Because there is a dearth of new information, we must work with dated information and very limited trend data. The third edition of The Health of Canada's Children will report fewer new national and provincial statistics on children and youth with disabilities than the second edition. Regrettably, we know less today than we did in 1994. This unfortunate situation reflects the fact that children have simply not been on the agenda in terms of surveillance and monitoring in this area.

If we are to support children and youth with disabilities and their families, we need reliable, accurate, and current information about the impact of functional disabilities on day-to-day living. This means monitoring interactions with the health and social services systems. It means collecting information on a much broader range of issues. I should say that disability results in more complex and more multi-dimensional lives, not less. Finally, it means recognizing increased longevity among children and youth with disabilities, and collecting data that address our successes and failures at meeting their challenges as they grow up.

In all cases, our experts emphasized the importance of taking into account contextual factors—for example, place of residence—that have an impact on outcome. These are things that we need ongoing data on.

According to the national experts we consulted, there is a need for accurate, nationally representative information on the numbers of children and youth with disabilities requiring health and social services; the number of hospital visits that families make; the total number of health contacts; the length of waiting times for required health and social services; and the need for access to respite care.

I'd like to emphasize here that children, more than any other demographic group, are parts of families, and we need to recognize and value the contributions made by these families.

Although most of this information is not accessible at this time, there are reasons for concern. For example, in Alberta there has been an effort to count the number of hospital or health care contacts made by families with children who are severely disabled or who have severe functional disabilities. The experts from Alberta Health stated that the average was close to 12 per week. Imagine the impact on a family of 12 health care contacts in a week. Imagine the respite needs of their caregivers as well as the needs for other kinds of support.

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Do not imagine that these issues apply only to children and youth with severe disabilities and their families. Sadly, we simply do not have the information we need to evaluate the varying impact of different disabilities on children and youth and their families. We do know, however, that monitoring interactions with health and social services for all families with children and youth with disabilities, and identifying gaps in these services, will help us to ensure appropriate policies are put into place.

Our experts also emphasize that there is an equally pressing need for information on a much broader range of issues, such as the effect of child and youth disabilities on the following: family functioning; family structure; parental employment and work patterns; family income; access to child care; inclusion in family, school and community life; access to recreation that is truly recreation and not simply another form of childcare; the risk of violence and abuse; contacts with the child welfare system; youth sexuality; the quality and quantity of peer relationships; emotional and psychological well-being relative to control groups of peers; and the development of independence.

I'd like to say at this time that we have no data to help us address these issues on a national level.

When we look at this list, it is easy to see the personal challenges that children and youth with disabilities and all members of their families encounter. We know many families tackle these challenges with impressive strength and ingenuity. However, we should also see the social challenges we face, as a caring society, to ensure appropriate services and supports are put in place.

Finally, we must learn to see the social justice issues that in some ways present our greatest challenge. How many unfortunate realities are really social injustices with solutions if we had the commitment to pursue them?

Longevity is another issue I'd like to look at. With the trend towards greater longevity for persons with disabilities, there is an urgent need for accurate and detailed information on the improved survival rates for infants and children with severe disabilities and the growth and opportunities for them. Practitioners are aware of these changes, but they need supportive data if they are to change or to provide different services.

Very little is known about the transition from pediatric to adult care, or about barriers to education and employment for youth with disabilities, or about the barriers to independent living. These are challenges best solved by building in from the start recognition of the long-term needs of children and youth with disabilities. Early identification and support during the preschool years are part of a systematic approach to longevity issues.

The information needs in the area of children and youth with disabilities and their families, identified as we reviewed the material for the third edition of The Health of Canada's Children, are substantial. The gaps in our knowledge strongly argue for population-based surveys that focus on the effects of disabilities on children, youth and their families.

The health and activity limitations survey has the potential to fulfil many of these needs, but not as it stands, not until it covers a broader range of issues, and not until it is repeated with greater frequency.

For example, the HALS was not inclusive in that it did not provide meaningful data on the life needs or life experiences of the severely disabled and their families. The national longitudinal survey of children and youth and the national population health survey offer some information on childhood and youth disability, but they are not disability surveys, and they cannot address complex questions about the effects of disabilities on individuals.

To conclude, we know less about these children and their families today than we did in 1994. Without knowledge, we cannot hope to construct a world that is fair and inclusive, and the pursuit of this knowledge should be a priority on all of our agendas.

I'd like to stress as well that although these children and youth do make up a small percentage of Canadians, they are not an insignificant number, numbering in the hundreds of thousands.

The Chairman: Before you turn it over to your colleague, I would just like to note the presence on the committee of Dr. Carolyn Bennett, who chairs another subcommittee, one of the innumerable subcommittees of HRDP. I have a feeling that since we share a common researcher, you may be hearing more from Dr. Bennett in another context involving some of the same players.

Ms. Karen Kidder: We look forward to it.

The Chairman: This proves how seamless our work is, but it's also the commonality of measuring outcomes.

Ms. Karen Kidder: I will turn it over to Sandra.

Ms. Sandra Schwartz (Director, Environmental Programs, Canadian Institute of Child Health): I have quite a loud voice, so I don't know how many of you will actually need earpieces. I've been told that as an actress I could boom my voice throughout a large theatre.

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I work for the Canadian Institute of Child Health as the director of environmental programs, so my role here today is to introduce the ideas of what we have come up with at the institute in terms of environmental issues and their links to child health.

Certainly there are innumerable gaps in research and data, but I won't focus so much on that. I will indicate where there is some information available on the links between environmental exposure and disability as well as behavioural problems, asthma, and so on. Then I will go into emerging issues and the reason that we need a more precautionary approach in many of the policies we do take.

I'll then go into describing a way of potentially doing that—creating an office of children's environmental health protection or commissioner for child health, or having centres of excellence in child health, particularly one that focuses strictly on environment and its effects on children.

Many factors determine whether a child is born healthy and stays healthy into adulthood. These factors are interdependent, and among them the environment rates very highly. Because of their rapid growth, physiologic and metabolic immaturity, the fetus and child are often at increased risk from toxic substances in their environment.

Although the impact of environmental contaminants on human health has been widely studied internationally, very few reports in Canadian literature have focused on this specific vulnerability of children.

Several of the key determinants of health are important to keep in mind as we examine the impact of contaminants on child health. Often key outcomes are seen as having single causes; however, they should be seen as determined by multiple causes.

I'll add at this point that looking at multiple causes is extremely difficult in research—it's much easier to look at the one-cause, one-effect model—but we do need to start moving into the multiple-cause, multiple-effect model.

The effect of poverty on children's health is just one example of an environment that includes social and physical factors, such as poor-quality housing, polluted environments, poor diets, stressed families, inadequate education, inadequate material resources, poor self-esteem, and so on, all often occurring together. Virtually every health indicator shows a relationship to poverty—for example, infant mortality, leading causes of death, reasons for hospital care, and health-related behaviour.

Poverty increases the likelihood that adults and children will be exposed to environmental contaminants. Typically, we know, the poor live downhill, downwind, and downstream from sources of pollution, around polluted workplaces, and in unsafe and sometimes very toxic housing. An example of this is South Riverdale, a community based in Toronto with extremely high levels of lead, both in the soil and in the housing around the area.

Beginning in 1997, CICH conducted a national qualitative survey identifying a sample of activities underway by environmental and health groups to protect children from environmental hazards. We had a response rate of 43%, a very good response rate. It was a national study, so it did look at several different regions.

The perceptions of the respondents were often not congruent with current scientific research. For example, many substances, such as benzene and radon—and radon, found in the home, is a radioactive substance—that have been identified in scientific literature as having a high risk to human health were not identified by many respondents as being a threat.

In addition, 64% of the respondents indicated that respiratory illness is the most serious environmental health issue facing children and youth today.

Although available scientific research parallels this response, other conditions, such as birth defects, endocrine disrupters—that's any chemical that can impact the hormone system, the thyroid system as well as others—and neurological or behavioural abnormalities were all ranked below 5% as the most serious health issues.

As well, outdoor air quality was seen as a more serious health threat than indoor air quality, even though studies have proven that pollution indoors can be much higher than outdoors.

In the analysis of survey results, significant knowledge deficits are evident for contaminants and the health outcomes that result from exposure. Public perceptions and research findings are not compatible with one another. This clearly shows the need for more information sharing, improved public education, and further research into child health and the environment. The sharing of information and program ideas between groups may increase knowledge levels, increase collaboration, and decrease duplication at local, regional and national levels.

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A growing body of evidence demonstrates the wide array of child health problems that can be brought on or exacerbated by environmental exposures. I'll just go over a few of those.

One, asthma deaths among children and young people have increased during the last decade. Asthma is now the leading cause of hospital admissions for children in many countries.

Statistics Canada released a report not that long ago showing a fourfold increase in asthma incidents. A fourfold increase cannot be attributed solely to increased numbers of physicians noticing that a child may have asthma or asthma-type conditions. A fourfold increase cannot actually be attributed solely to physicians'...

The Chairman: More reporting.

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: Yes, to more reporting of it. Thank you.

In fact, more research into looking at environmental factors may be necessary, because there could be a very real risk to children exposed to indoor contaminants, causing the onset of asthma.

Children exposed to tobacco smoke at home have more days of restricted activity, bed confinement, and missed school days each year than other children. Large numbers of children live within a few kilometres, or even on, toxic waste dumps. An example of that would be the Sydney Tar Ponds out in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Many children are exposed to higher-than-average levels of ground-level ozone as a result of living adjacent to high-density traffic corridors and interchanges.

Water pollution can affect children directly when they drink from or swim in rivers and lakes, or indirectly when they eat contaminated fish.

Children exposed in utero, or following birth, to pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, heavy metals and other chemicals may face disruption of their endocrine systems, stunted growth, immune suppression, mental disability and other neurobehavioural and developmental effects.

I note that in the NLSCY they did not take into account physical environment when looking at some of the different end points.

Although exposures to some environmental hazards have decreased because of tougher health and environment standards, such as the elimination of lead from gasoline, children continue to be exposed to toxic chemicals in air, water, and food because current policies do not consider children a specifically vulnerable population. Current standards are developed to protect adults, not children, and fail to reflect new information on children's environmental health.

In May 1997 the environment leaders of the G-7 countries, plus Russia—known as “The Eight”—developed the 1997 Declaration of the Environment Leaders of the Eight on Children's Environmental Health, providing a framework for domestic, bilateral and international efforts to improve the protection of children's health from environmental threats. As a signatory to the declaration, Canada pledged to give priority to children's environmental health issues related to lead, drinking water, air quality, environmental tobacco smoke, hormone-disrupting chemicals, and climate change.

In addition, the leaders agreed to establish national policies that recognize the vulnerability of infants and children to environmental contaminants and to promote research on this topic.

Unfortunately, Canadian leaders have done little to live up to these commitments. Consequently, Canada is falling behind other countries, such as the United States, in creating protective policies for children.

Although there are many well-documented studies on the apparent risks, there is presently little consensus among scientists and governments on how, or if, exposures to toxic chemicals in the environment are having damaging health effects. In many instances, in the case of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, there is a lack of conclusive data in human populations of direct causal links.

This lack of information makes it difficult for government agencies to confront the problem, apparently because of the belief that responses must be based on incontrovertible, direct scientific evidence that commercial interests cannot refute. Most studies have lacked an interdisciplinary approach, thus missing the complexity of the exposure/disease association. It is often extremely difficult to causally associate health problems that may result from multiple low levels of exposure, especially if the resulting health problems occur after long latency periods and have no features specifically identifying them as caused by factors in the environment.

However, lack of scientific certainty or absolute proof of association must not be a reason for inaction. Whole populations could potentially be placed at risk.

The precautionary principle, therefore, must be the basis upon which all environmental and health legislation is based. This concept was endorsed at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janiero in 1992, and is already implemented in some European and U.S. regulatory systems.

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It recognizes that we must act preventatively in the face of uncertainty, erring on the side of caution. It follows the idea of the medical model, “First do no harm”.

The Chairman: Are you close to...

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: I'm close to wrapping up. I was told I had five minutes, but I noticed everybody else went way over, so I'm taking the opportunity to do the same.

The Chairman: Gresham's law of talking or something.

Voices: Oh, oh.

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: Okay. I won't go over the precautionary principle any further than that. If anyone has questions, please feel free to ask.

In terms of protection of Canadian children from environmental hazards, it requires strong political commitment and legislation similar to that of several endorsements coming out of the United States during the past few years. In order to protect children from environmental threats, we need similar child-centred protection strategies within Canadian bureaucratic structures.

The establishment of an office of children's environmental health protection, similar to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's office of children's health protection, and a Canadian commissioner of child health would aid in promoting the precautionary principle by determining the existing body of knowledge and identifying key information gaps in children's environmental health issues, ensuring that current scientific information is widely disseminated, promoting research and policy development and identifying opportunities for co-ordination with other agencies.

In conclusion, as we wrestle with the question of how much chemical contaminants are contributing to the trends and societal patterns we see—for example, increased infertility, learning disabilities, asthma, and cancers—and what direct and indirect impacts transportation, energy, and agricultural sectors, to name only a few, are having on human health and global change, it is important to keep one thing in mind. Scientists keep finding significant and often permanent effects at surprisingly low doses. In order to protect the health and well-being of children, action on developing environmental targets through enforceable legislation is needed despite existing uncertainties and the need for more environmental health research.

Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. That was a real tour d'horizon.

The only thing I'm going to ask of my fellow committee members, other than their splendid self-discipline, is that before anyone goes—I'm hoping Jackson is coming back—we cannot afford to lose another member before we vote on a budget. If somebody has to leave, we may have to interrupt the proceedings. Otherwise, at least one visitor won't be able to join us next week.

Bearing that in mind,

[Translation]

please go ahead, Ms. Gagnon.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon (Québec, BQ): Thank you. I note that you have made a number of recommendations. Eight workshops followed up on these recommendations and I see that considerable emphasis was placed on having the provinces follow up with concrete action.

I'm curious as to whether the purpose of this longitudinal survey is to make recommendations to provincial governments or whether in fact the sole purpose is to report on the welfare of Canadian children. You are focusing on family structures, children's education and follow-up actions. I have a more general suggestion as to what we could do to help families. Socioeconomic indicators could be used to help low or middle-income families.

We are well aware of the cuts that have been made to the Canadian Health and Social Transfer, to employment insurance and to social housing, not to mention the de-indexing of child tax benefits. The government has cut into social programs. Now that it has done this, it is proposing a separate program which ultimately, aims in some way to do away with the support that the provinces could provide.

I'm somewhat concerned about this because I have to wonder how these recommendations will be worded. I realize that the provinces are taking some initiatives, although the effort might not be the same across the board. I will come back later to some of the more specific aspects of your survey.

Generally speaking, I'd like to know what kind of recommendations you plan to put forward? Will they be worded in such a way that the federal government will be getting the provinces to toe the line?

Mr. Wayne Smith: In fact, it's not Statistics Canada's job to make policy recommendations to the government. We are doing this survey to measure and gain a better understanding of the issues involved here. We pass along this information to departments that have a responsibility for setting policy in these areas and they will be the ones to decide what action is warranted.

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We pass along the very same information to the provinces and to the federal government as well as to certain groups that carry out studies, among others, the Canadian Council on Social Development. Policy decisions flow from this process and it is not Statistics Canada's role to formulate recommendations.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Your objective then is to provide the minister with some food for thought by reporting on the situation. If there are poor children, it's because there are poor parents. There are poor parents because there are fewer social benefits and parents are not getting the support and assistance they need to ensure that their children grow up in a healthier, more secure environment, that they eat better and that they themselves no longer have to scramble to get employment insurance benefits when they lose their job. It's a known fact that a scant 36 per cent of unemployed workers are entitled to EI. Families are breaking down and the divorce rate is escalating. The consequences of all of this are grave indeed.

I have a more specific question for you. Could you tell us more about how you measure certain factors? I know that other studies have been done on the impact of socioeconomic factors on children. A similar study was carried out in a poorer part of my riding and the results weren't quite the same. For example, you say that it may be more difficult for a single parent to provide support to his child and that that child runs of the risk of not doing as well in school. The study conducted in my riding revealed that the structure of the family, whether single parent, two-parent or blended, is not important. What matters more is the support and follow-up given to the children. The study found that family structure or family income is less important then the follow-up, support, attention and encouragement that children receive. Earlier, you stressed the importance of family structure. I'd like to know which indicators you used to do your measurements.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Let me first say that I have only given you a very general overview of the survey, from a macroeconomic standpoint. It may be possible to observe differences at a microeconomic, or community, level. The last of our transparencies focuses on how parenting style affects children's behaviour and shows that the parent-child relationship is ultimately more important than family type, whether single-parent or two-parent.

Parenting style matters if we take a look at the school environment or at different measurements. A book by Douglas J. Wilms, which is presently being edited, is scheduled to be released in April. It focuses on populations and children at risk and examines in greater detail all of these factors. Funding for this work was provided by the Department of Human Resources Development.

Our goal was to collect information to encourage more research into this field. However, as Wayne mentioned, our role was confined to collecting basic information. Most likely other sources could provide more appropriate information.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Your sample involves children between the ages of 0 and 11. Is that correct?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Yes. The survey was started in 1994.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Does your sample include children from every province?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Originally, our goal was to collect information on all children between the ages of 0 and 11 in every province, as well as national data on children in different cohorts, specifically the 0-1 cohort, since we realized that we didn't have a great deal of information about the development of very young children.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Then you didn't draw distinctions between the various provinces?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Not on the basis of age groups.

The Chairman: That will be the focus of research at a later date.

Ms. Libby Davies.

[English]

Ms. Libby Davies (Vancouver East, NDP): Thank you.

First of all, I'd like to say thank you very much for coming. I have a ton of questions. I wish we had more time to talk.

I was just looking at the material last year from the CCSD where you said another year of discussion and debate about kids has passed. I think that's a very pertinent point, so let's hope through the work of this committee we can make sure some action comes out of this.

• 1635

I want to pick up where Sandra left off in terms of the environment. Part of the area I represent is Vancouver east, the downtown east side. I happened to drive one of my constituents over the weekend away from Main and Hastings, and we actually went to west Vancouver, to a little church called St. Francis In the Wood, which is the only 24-hour church still in the lower mainland.

I want to tell you this because it was like going to a different country, from Main and Hastings, where probably the biggest complaint is noise, air pollution, and just the stress of being in a city, with people living in hotels and rooming houses and kids living in rooming houses, to this very nice community in west Vancouver, where there were cedar trees and fresh air—it's by the ocean—very nice houses, quiet little streets. Just to get some respite from the stress for a couple of hours was really quite remarkable for this person. So I think it's a very valid point about the impact the environment has on children and families.

I have a couple of questions. Following up from Madame Gagnon, I think the longitudinal study is very significant in that it is a long-term study that is tracking the well-being of Canada's children. But I'm very interested as well—and I think you all gave references to it—in the impact of public policy on Canada's children and who does that. Who actually keeps track of that?

If you think about the decades during which we had things like family allowance and social housing, we've lost 75,000 units that would have been built if we had continued at the rate we were at in 1993. I know from my own community what social housing does when a family is in social housing versus really bad housing—or even the UI changes.

To me one of the really interesting questions, if we are looking at a national children's agenda and trying to figure out who's on the agenda—is it all children or just some children—is about the impact of public policy and how that's actually shifted.

I'm very interested in your comments about whether or not we should be directing ourselves to kind of broader public policy initiatives, whether they're around housing, income support, early childhood education or improvement of the environment, that are sort of overall determinants of health. Whether you're middle class or low income, or whether or not you support this idea that somehow the child tax benefit says you get this, but if you're on welfare you don't—the more targeting thing.

I think there has been a very big shift, and there's a very big question about whether or not that's the right direction to go in and whether or not that public policy shift itself is now having an impact that maybe shows up in the longitudinal study or other things you're doing through the NGO community.

I don't know if that's too broad for you to pick up, but I'm just curious about your response to that.

The Chairman: Who wants a swing?

Katherine, do you want to have a go at that?

Ms. Katherine Scott: Just boiling it down, you're asking whether we actually have enough information about Canadian public policies that currently exist and their impact on children.

Certainly a number of groups do a lot of that research and are fairly vocal in their opinions about current government initiatives or those of the past. They've been lobbying for a very long time in this area in particular about the increased targeting that's now characteristic of income security programming in Canada and the like, and what the consequences of that have been—certainly the EI changes.

Personally, it's just beyond me why there hasn't been more outrage about what's been going on with the EI program and the consequences in terms of coverage.

The Chairman: You should come to the main committee some time.

Ms. Katherine Scott: Yes. But I think that's really part of an agenda that really needs to move forward.

There is a group of national NGOs called the Children's Alliance that is looking precisely at some of these questions and putting forward their ideas around what need to be component parts of a children's agenda, to move forward on improving life chances for kids.

You're really bringing up another interesting point. It's been a decade of targeting—it's probably been two decades of targeting. Let's take this back to the early eighties, not only in income security programming but in children's programming. I think we've seen real interest in groups of kids that are particularly at risk, and that could be poor kids. Campaign 2000 has been very articulate on that.

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The spate of child mortality inquests, for instance, that have happened in Ontario and elsewhere—Vancouver and the like—has drawn attention to children in care.

So we're at odds about whether we need to focus on these particularly high-risk populations, and certainly that's where the research need is—we know very little about them—or do we adopt an approach where the water lifts all boats, which is a population health approach? I think that's something your committee will be struggling with. Your title would suggest that you're looking at kids at risk. That's a very particular type of language and it means very particular things to folks like us. Those are kids that are street kids.

Globally, I think the solution has to be a population-health solution, and it has to be looking at income security programs, understanding that children live in families and that they are as directly affected by cuts to EI as their parents are, or health programs and the erosion of confidence in the public health system. Those are broad-stroke kinds of measures that will have a diverse effect, but one that's very important, rather than perhaps the very high-profile $10 million to the healthy baby program in a micro-corner of Scarborough where there's a... that sort of thing. I'm not suggesting those are unimportant initiatives, but it's a tension that you need to be very aware of.

The Chairman: I'm just a little concerned about our time, so we may possibly return to this. Perhaps I can move on to Mr. Jackson, who has a question, and then Dr. Bennett.

Mr. Ovid L. Jackson (Bruce—Grey, Lib.): Mr. Chairman, let me add this from HRDC. They told us that 80% of the kids do well anyway, despite what goes on. We know from experience some significant things about kids despite a poor background or poor parenting. If they have a significant person, if they're successful at certain things, or if somebody took an interest in their life, sometimes they get out of that circle of disparity. I don't know if anybody could comment on that.

I'm interested in the survey you have, because we're taking a longitudinal survey and we want to see where the kids are. Then we're going to measure them through that, because the whole object of this exercise is to try to fix the system. We're not here to complain about what happened in the past—I'm not, at least. I want to fix the damn thing, if we have some problems. We don't just throw money at it, though.

Parents don't have exams to have families. They're dysfunctional. I taught high school. I know. I called them up in the middle of the day and they'd be drunk and say, “What the hell did you call me for? You look after the kid.” Something like that. And we don't have a kibbutz system where you can take the kids away. So we have to find solutions to some of these problems. Housing is one, income is another one, and there are other things.

I would be interested to know how you came up with the questions here. There are some interesting questions. For instance, you ask about vandalism, how to judge a kid as a bully, or if they have ever fired a gun. Some of these things are kind of weird. I don't know who could answer that.

The Chairman: Do you want to have a go at it?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: There's been an expert advisory group organized by HRDC that have suggested to us the instruments we've been using. We often use things that have been tested or used in other surveys, things that have been recommended, such as these experts. We had experts representing different fields and they suggested the questions to us. We've tested them and modified them sometimes in the survey context. I can provide you with a list of experts who provided content on the different things. That's all documented.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Children have different learning styles, and sometimes we think we know... when certain things connect, certain things happen. Maybe there are predictable levels. How useful is this information? Of course, it's in its young years yet; you're just starting up. How useful is it? Is it flexible enough to take some of those suggestions so that the child doesn't get pigeon-holed?

You get a circle of disparity when a poor kid comes into the school with a middle class teacher. For starters, the kid may have a lot of good aptitudes, but he swears and he has really bad habits. That middle class teacher may just push the kid off and say, “Well, play in the sandbox.” Finally, the kid is placed in what I call the circle of disparity. Finally, he quits school and starts his own family, and the same thing happens all over again. So pigeon-holing them is not always a good thing to do.

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What happens to these statistics?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: It's very early on in the research to be able to say exactly what are the results that will be coming out. But definitely all the experts seem to be suggesting that we have to look at consequences through time. What we've been finding out so far is that at least in a two-year cycle, some of the effects seem to be longer-term. We see movement, but we can't explain it yet.

We'll know later on, after the fact, how useful it's been. There's been this whole issue of the measurement of community that we're starting to look into because it's been pointed out to us that community may have an impact. But it might be early for us to tell you that that would accomplish our mandate. Hopefully with all the experts we've been having, we've been focusing on the right things.

The Chairman: Can I just clarify one thing? I would assume that none of the data are ascribable to an individual identifiable child.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Of course not.

The Chairman: So there's no pigeon-holing by your survey. There may be in the school system.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Yes, you're absolutely right.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Just a comment. There was a school—I can't remember, someplace in Toronto—that did extremely well because of the community. The parents were interested and in that community they were involved and the kids' grades were high and so on. There was another school in that area that did poorly. So they tried to mix those kids. They brought the bad kids over, bussed them over, took the other kids down, and they all went down to the lower level. Don't try that.

The Chairman: If any of you were planning that, don't do it.

Maybe we can move on to Dr. Bennett.

Mr. Wayne Smith: I just have one comment. The comment you made at the very beginning was quite important. We released the most recent wave of information from the survey, and one of our lead statements in the release was that overwhelmingly Canadian children, whether they're poor or not, whether they're single-parent or not single-parent families, are doing very well.

Mr. Ovid Jackson: They can do better.

Mr. Wayne Smith: That is the most fundamental fact that emerges from the survey. But there are children at risk and we need to be concerned about those children. Overwhelmingly, the survey shows that children are doing very well and developing very well in Canada.

The Chairman: Dr. Bennett.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.): First of all, I want to draw the attention of Madame Gagnon to this last graph, which I think in the longitudinal survey on parenting style matters, which may reflect what the researchers in her own area said... I was wondering why you didn't include one parent in effective parenting on this graph.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: That's an oversight.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Because it looks like, I think we would have to say... Well that's good that there's not enough ineffective... so I would boast about that and say we couldn't even find an ineffective single parent to make it significant. I think that's a good thing. I'd put a little asterisk and a footnote on that if I were you.

I will save my disability questions for another time, but I will just say that there are a number of us hoping that next year's budget will be a children's budget, and perhaps even an environment budget, so that separate from this committee, doing children at risk, there are a lot of us under John's leadership pushing hard to make sure there will be a budget for the millennium that will be lifting all boats. Whatever help you can give us on that would be... whatever good ammunition.

I have some concerns on the tool that was used in the longitudinal survey. Certainly as a family physician I have spent 20 years trying to explain that labelling really matters, and even with our colleagues, we don't call them bigots; we ask them to be more open-minded.

On the kindergarten tool, where it actually says “is cruel”, that's a label. I guess I was very concerned that if this tool could be “has been seen to show cruel behaviour” or something... There's a very different thing about calling a kid cruel when they're still in kindergarten that worries me.

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I am worried in terms of the privacy thing. If we're actually talking about any tool that would be looking at readiness to learn, you have to say that, hopefully, at some point the school system would be using this tool to decide what you do. Whether it's health report cards or other report cards, there's no point in having a report card unless there's an ability for remediation. So you actually have to say, so what happens if the kid is not ready to learn? What do we do? What happens if you flunk this test? I would be tempted to think people would photocopy this tool or find something and put it in the kid's file in the school and then track these kids, if you had keen teachers who wanted to do their own little instinct-based research on this stuff.

Even though there are no names on this, shouldn't we tidy it up? Shouldn't we get those experts back? If they still think it's okay to label kids, then we need new experts. It makes me uncomfortable. I would hope that we would eventually be able to develop a tool that could be used by everybody and also in your very important longitudinal survey.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: I have two responses to that. First, this is part of a scale. The scale by itself would never be released. It's a series of indicators all combined that kind of give you an indication, and that's this score that is on the micro-data file. It's not these particular questions that would be used.

With regard to the second issue on how we use it for putting it in a record or something like that, in April a special project will take place in North York where they will administer a questionnaire to all the children who are part of that school board, and we're going to validate some of the results they have there with what we have. Hopefully, these kinds of community projects might be more the issue where you could actually use that information in the school to see readiness to learn.

What the NLSCY is trying to give is more information, linkage and things like that, at the macro-level but not at the micro-level, and nothing trying to label one kid as disadvantaged or advantaged but trying to understand the link. Hopefully, other initiatives, such as the North York project, may help you with this report card on readiness to learn and policy intervention.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: As my colleague, Mr. Jackson, said, what happens if somebody says, have you fired a gun at somebody or forced somebody into having sex with you? Obviously, privacy is a big concern, but so is the public good. I think all of us have spent a lot of time wishing we hadn't asked certain questions. What do we do with these?

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: The information hasn't been released, but it's on the self-completed report. We provide numbers and rates, but to ensure confidentiality, it wouldn't go anywhere. For example, it wouldn't go to the justice department. It's just providing incentives. If you want the numbers and the information on the real prevalence rate, you cannot link it and then say, I'm going to release that information somewhere else. So we get this information in order to have rates and information, but it wouldn't go anywhere else.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: I hope on that one you don't have a significant number either.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: No.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Eventually, do you get to drop the question when you get sort of...

Anyway, I have one other question on the environmental piece. Are there other jurisdictions where people have to prove something safe rather than have the government have to prove that it's harmful?

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: Yes.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: How do we switch the paradigm that says that before something is released or you're allowed to put it on the market, you have to prove that it's safe?

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: For example, if you look at food safety or pharmaceuticals, the proof has to be in the pudding. The government requires that pharmaceutical companies give the toxicology information, the carcinogenicity testing, and all of that before the product is allowed out.

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They have much more stringent regulations on food and pharmaceuticals than they do on chemicals. There is new legislation within Health Canada where for any new chemical that comes on to the market—I can't remember the name of it, but it's something like the new chemicals regulation act—they have to show some of that data as well. A chemical company would have to prove fairly, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it wouldn't have human harm.

The difficulty with this is that many of the tests are done on the healthy male adult. So an animal like a rat would be tested for whether or not that product or chemical will cause cancer. It's done on a healthy male rat, an adult rat. It's not done on a child. Then what they do is they have a factor of 10 and they go down and figure out whether it will have an impact on a child.

If you don't test specifically on either the fetus, so in the womb what the in utero exposure might be, as opposed to using these factors, the risk assessments that are done just don't adequately protect a child.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: But in order to get something off the market, that's the government's job. They have to prove something's harmful.

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: Unfortunately, yes. That's the problem. We have 70,000 chemicals currently on the market, with 1,000 added per year, and we only know maybe 2% to 5% of the effects of those chemicals. That's pretty scary. So I think the model does have to be switched to be similar to what they have in pharmaceuticals and make certain that the industry proves that the chemical doesn't have an effect.

Ms. Carolyn Bennett: Do we have anything in our trade regulations, particularly with things we've banned here, like DDT, to make sure that products coming back across our borders aren't filled with the stuff?

Ms. Sandra Schwartz: To a certain extent, from my knowledge, the regulations have that in terms of transportation. You mentioned DDT. DDT is still being manufactured in the U.S. It's not being used in the U.S., but it's being used in Mexico. We're now also seeing DDT levels in the Great Lakes region in mothers who are breastfeeding. We're seeing it in the Inuit population. DDT was never used in the north, so obviously there's no regulation with air transport. So the air itself, the water, and the food still have those contaminants on them, but for the product per se there are regulations to not allow DDT in.

The Chairman: I'd like to interrupt the proceedings just to give you a bit of a sketch of what lies before us.

Technically this committee is supposed to sit for about an hour and a half. We around the table on this side have a drop dead time of 5.30 p.m. for votes. And some of you may have children you wish to go back to as we think of risk factors here. But I do know there are some members who would like to continue the conversation. However, we also have this one item of business I would like to attend to. I wouldn't want to give the impression in front of others that we attend to things lightly, but there are two budget items that I would like agreement on, which would allow us to return to this fascinating conservation.

The first is literally the sum of $250 for an interim budget to allow a witness to appear next week, Tom Kent. The other is a budget that would see us through the end of June and allow us to both print a report and bring in witnesses from across the country, up to a total of $20,000. The reason I'm telling you this now is that if we don't submit these requests tomorrow to the mother committee, the main committee, then we miss a whole budget cycle of demand and we're going to be thrown off in our work.

Ms. Libby Davies: Do you have it written out?

The Chairman: I certainly do. I can circulate it, if you'd like to look at it and then vote on it a bit later.

Ms. Libby Davies: Can we look at it for a minute?

The Chairman: Yes.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: Mr. Chairman, wouldn't it be better to allow us 10 more minutes to put questions to the witnesses, before we proceed to vote on the motions?

The Chairman: I fully agree with you. I was just concerned that some members might have to leave at 5 p.m. sharp. Can you all stay until we take a vote?

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I don't have any problem with that.

• 1700

[English]

The Chairman: Mr. Jackson, you're okay until it's voting time? Could you stay ten more minutes?

Mr. Ovid Jackson: Yes, ten minutes.

The Chairman: Okay. Sorry to do all this housework, but we have to. Otherwise we don't carry on; we grind to a screeching halt.

Madame Gagnon.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: I'd like to come back to a comment you made. You note that some important things learned in 1994 were reinforced in 1996 and that generally speaking, Canadian children seem to be doing well. However, some statistics tell a different story. We are told that more children are living in poverty and in fact that there are nearly 800 million more children living in poverty since... That's precisely why a decision was made to set up a committee to examine this trend, as well as to focus on poor children and youth at risk.

On what do you base your observation that Canadian children seem to be doing well? What measurement of poverty do you use to be in a position to say that children are doing well? We know very well that not everyone agrees on the measurement used to determine whether or not a family is poor. Do we look at the cost of a basket of groceries or do we look at income level? Perhaps the statistics do not give us the whole picture. A comparable situation is when the posted unemployment rate only takes into account persons looking for work, and disregards the number of unemployed persons not actively seeking unemployment.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: That's a good question. When we said that Canadian children seem to be doing well, we were basing our observations on general, rather than on specific, indicators. We did not establish a measurement of poverty, since Statistics Canada does not release officials figures on poverty. Rather, we looked at variables according to the lowest income quartiles. When we say that children seem to be doing well, indeed this depends on the measurements used. We based ourselves on the information provided by parents about their children's health, on the number of school problems reported, on the number of parents who told us that they hadn't received any calls from their children's school reporting behavioural problems, and so forth. We realize that this is a narrow measurement. All we were trying to do was to give a general overview of the situation. We took the general information collected in 1994 and looked at whether the situation had changed substantially between 1994 and 1996. Most of the indicators we used showed that the situation has remained relatively stable. However, we did not use all of the same indicators for the 1996 cycle.

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: The Minister of Human Resources Development will rely on the information you provide for guidance. Since this is a natural tendency for him, he will take your figures and state in the House that the situation isn't all that serious. These figures will enable him to turn a blind eye to some of the government's responses to these issues.

I'm not satisfied with the seemingly rosy picture that you have painted. The image is misleading. If I were to go to some of the areas in my riding and make the same comments based on the study and to say that generally speaking, children are doing well, I'd be asked who in heaven's name did this study. In some respects, you are misleading people about the true situation.

Even though some families may be managing despite meagre incomes, everyone is worried, whether it be about the possibility of losing their job or about making ends meet. People have these concerns. Even I wonder sometimes if once I'm retired, I'll be able to manage if something unfortunate happens to me. I, of all people, shouldn't have to ask myself that, but I do. I know that people who earn much less than I do ask themselves this question every day and live in fear of losing everything, of not having enough money to get by, of seeing their children get sick and of being unable to get help.

The witness stated that there were not enough statistics on health. Someone close to me suffered from a debilitating illness and therefore, I was faced with these same concerns. I helped this person pay for medication because it was not covered by insurance and that person did not have an income because she was unable to work.

• 1705

All of these factors combine to increase our anxiety level. We don't know if the system or the government will display enough fairness or social equity or whether it will continue to slash social transfers. That is why I am dissatisfied with this statement. I think we're behaving a little like ostriches by claiming that everything is fine. I know the minister and I'm concerned that he will merely repeat what you've said.

The Chairman: Perhaps you would like to respond briefly, Mr. Smith.

Mr. Wayne Smith: I'd simply like to say that the statistics presented today are national data. Obviously, if we had concentrated on certain areas of a particular province or on certain classes of society, we would have obtained different results. Our sampling covers a rather narrow group. That being said, we could certainly find groups in totally different situations. However, our survey monitors a particular sampling and shows the incidence of government policy changes on that particular group.

I maintain that this survey is quite valid, even though it does not provide specific information about conditions in a given riding.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: I'd just like to add that Human Resources Development Canada is currently working on developing better indicators, as it did with respect to the unemployment rate. People may disagree with how this rate is calculated, but the department continues to develop measurements that it can use on a more regular basis and continues to give us some assurances that the concept is well-defined and that these measurements are accurate. Public policy makers will therefore be better able to make sound decisions because they will have sound indicators to work with.

[English]

The Chairman: I think we have time for one more question before we have to say goodbye.

Madam Libby.

Ms. Libby Davies: One of the issues that's been touched on in terms of the measurements we use... sometimes you have to shake your head and wonder about how much progress we have made if we don't apparently yet still have a way of even knowing what poverty is. We've had LICO for I don't know how long—that's what I've always used—and all of a sudden it's not relevant anymore and we're going to have something else. The easiest way to redefine poverty is to just change the definition.

It seems to me that the whole issue of poverty is a very major impact in terms of children's well-being, the health of communities, and so on. There's just no escaping that. You, Statistics Canada, say you don't officially measure that. How does that then become part of the debate, from your point of view, of doing a major national survey in Canada on children? Surely one has to look at the state of the parents. Children are not divorced from their parents; they're part of that family unit. So we can't just put it under the rug and pretend it's not there. It is there. It is the reality. How do you square that off in your work?

The Chairman: I'd ask for a fairly quick response from Statistics Canada and then a final word from Katherine Scott.

Mr. Wayne Smith: The key issue is that poverty is a normative concept. It's not something we can measure, because someone has to tell us what it means. We need objective criteria we can apply. Statistics Canada has said clearly that if there could be a social consensus or a political consensus on what the definition of poverty is and how to measure it, then we would be happy to apply it and produce those measures. We've used, and we still use, the low-income cutoffs, the LICOs, as a measure of poverty. We didn't use them in the case of this survey because our emphasis was somewhere else, and we didn't measure income with the degree of precision necessary to actually produce the LICOs.

That's something we're looking at in terms of future cycles. Those LICOs are still the measures we use to identify low-income families. Are those people poor? It depends on your political viewpoint. Basically we have to turn back to the political levels and say, help us define this in operational terms.

The Chairman: With the help, of course, of our friends from the NGO community who will give us the last word.

Ms. Katherine Scott: The issue here is near and dear to my heart as I embark on The Canadian Fact Book on Poverty, and this must be the fourth edition we will be publishing this year. I thought LICO was on the—

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: No, we have LICO. This is not based on LICO, but we're still producing LICO and things like that.

Ms. Katherine Scott: With the NLSCY.

Ms. Sylvie Michaud: Yes.

Ms. Katherine Scott: What I would really like to say about this is that poverty lines are a really hot issue right now. It is certainly a political debate. Statistics Canada has produced LICOs for 20 years now. They are relative. All measures of poverty are relative. Don't let anybody tell you different. This Fraser Institute measure is equally as relative to the extent that they're making normative judgments about what goes into a market basket. It's a very political debate.

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The LICO perhaps is arguably better termed a measure of inequality to that extent, which is equally as important. I think we're spinning around counting measures as grains of rice while kids are in trouble. It absolutely appalls me that we're not focusing in on what this—it doesn't matter what type of measure you use. You can look at families—and we do this. We look at LICO, which actually, interestingly enough, parallels what the Gallup folks—if you ask people what they think an income is for a family of four, what would be a poor family, remarkably, year after year, it comes out at around the level of the LICO, and that's just happenstance.

We use the measure of a family of four living on a $20,000 income. Well, what would that be? It doesn't matter how you cut it. A kid growing up in a family with that level of income has a higher risk for particular outcomes.

That we have a debate around poverty lines right now—for instance, the new child tax benefit is an interesting example. They're looking at new measures to assess the adequacy or the efficacy of that particular program. It's certainly not a bad thing to look at a different market basket approach perhaps. But again, are we really just spinning—I'm always mixing my metaphors, angels on heads of pins and all the rest of it. I think we need to cut to the chase and say that poor kids in Canada are a problem and we damn well need to do something about it.

The Chairman: I think that's exactly the note we should end on.

We want to thank you. You can obviously see that we'd love to spend the rest of the evening with you all, but we have other things we have to do, unfortunately.

I would just stress that there are two things that come through. One is, whether it's to do with environmental issues or with disability issues or children in general, community matters hugely. Secondly, whether we're talking about the social environment and the complexity of understanding multiple factors and their relationship with outcomes or the physical environment, there's a common problem. Every time you add another factor, it's harder to say what caused what, and you get weird interconnections, which doesn't mean we shouldn't be going at it with greater understanding and greater resources so that we can figure out what equals what with the help of our friends from Statistics Canada.

Thank you very much for opening up the conversation.

If I may turn to our friends who are about to hear the bell bong and ask if I might have a general...

Ms. Libby Davies: It's on the motion?

The Chairman: Yes, it's on the general...

Ms. Libby Davies: I have a question.

The Chairman: Sure—where did we come up with it?

Ms. Libby Davies: I'm just curious. You're saying we would spend $250 to hear out-of-town people before the end of March, but then it would be $20,000... How did you break it down?

The Chairman: We put $2,000 of the $20,000 aside for the report itself, a report we might wish to do. This is up to $20,000. Then if we notionally—and we can't know because we want to bring in. If we want to bring in people from across the country, at a ballpark total cost of say $1,200 per witness, and you have 15 witnesses, that's $18,000. We would not necessarily spend it all, but we need to have that flexibility.

Ms. Libby Davies: We have to get this to the committee tomorrow, I take it.

The Chairman: That's right. Are we okay?

Ms. Libby Davies: Do you need a motion?

The Chairman: I think it just needs agreement.

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: What have we just adopted?

The Chairman: We haven't adopted this motion yet. We won't necessarily spend $20,000 by June, but we should be aware of the fact that drafting a report represents an expenditure of $2,000 and that if we called 15 witnesses, who on average will cost us $1,200 each in travelling and accommodation expenses, we will spend $18,000. I don't know whether we will spend the entire amount, but our subcommittee must table its budget to the standing committee tomorrow. Is everyone in agreement?

[English]

Agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

• 1715

[Translation]

Ms. Christiane Gagnon: On average, what do committees spend on witness travel expenses?

The Clerk of the Committee: On average, committees spend $1,200 per witness.

The Chairman: Thank you.

[English]

Thank you very much. The meeting is adjourned.